Acute Care Surgery Fellowship

The University of Florida and UF Health Shands Trauma Center was approved as an official fellowship training site for Acute Care Surgery by the American Association for the surgery of Trauma in 2014.

Acute Care Surgery encompasses the comprehensive operative and critical care management of patients with life-threatening traumatic and surgical emergencies. The Acute Care Surgery fellowship aims to train the next generation of acute care surgeons, preparing them for clinical and administrative leadership roles in an environment of increasing need for emergency surgical treatment. While considered additional post-surgical training, the fellowship really represents a return to fundamental general surgery that includes abdominal and endocrine general surgery, head and neck, thoracic, vascular, and damage control neurosurgery and orthopedics.

ACS fellows will have a robust two-year training experience that will fulfill the requirements of the AAST Acute Care Surgery curriculum. The scope of this fellowship includes a broad clinical experience in trauma, burns, surgical emergencies, elective sub-specialty surgery and surgical critical care. The ACS fellowship is closely integrated with the Surgical Critical Care Residency, and at the completion of the fellowship, trainees will be eligible to take the American Board of Surgery Surgical Critical Care board examination.

Clinical Experience

The core clinical training facility for the Acute Care Surgery fellowship is UF Health Shands Hospital, located on the University of Florida Health Science Center campus in Gainesville, Florida. UF Health is an academic, Level I trauma center and tertiary surgical referral center serving North and Central Florida, as well as southern Georgia.

The 1st year of the fellowship focuses the management of critically-ill patients in the University of Florida’s ACGME/RRC approved Surgical Critical Care Residency training program. Surgical critical care residents are required to complete 9 months of critical care training, with 7 months being spent in the trauma intensive care (TICU) and surgical intensive care (SICU) units. The critical care electives available are vast, including but not limited to trauma surgery, burn surgery, cardiothoracic ICU, medical ICU, pediatric ICU, neonatal ICU, VA SICU/CTICU, research, nutrition, ultrasound/echocardiography, airway, gerontology and advance radiology. Upon completion of the first year, the fellow will be eligible to take the American Board of Surgery Surgical Critical Care board examination.

The 2nd year of the fellowship focuses on developing and refining both operative technique and peri-operative management strategies in order to prepare the trainee to provide comprehensive surgical care to critically-ill patients with surgical emergencies. During this year, the fellows are clinical instructors and are expected to take a leadership role on the trauma and acute care surgery service at UF Health Shands Trauma Center. Under the supervision of the clinical faculty, the ACS fellow is afforded increased operative and service management autonomy as they progress throughout the year. The trauma and acute care surgery service is a high-volume, high-acuity clinical service which practices and embodies the full-breadth of acute care surgery, including trauma, surgical emergencies, surgical critical care and elective general surgery. UF Health Shands Trauma Center is unique in that it is one of only a few Level 1 trauma centers in the United States with a fully operational ‘hybrid operating room’ dedicated exclusively to trauma and acute surgical emergencies. The hybrid operating room allows for a timely, multidisciplinary approach for trauma/acute care surgeons, vascular surgeons and interventional radiologists to simultaneously utilize a full range of open, endovascular and minimally invasive interventions for injuries and hemorrhage control. Additional subspecialty operative experience will be obtained with structured rotations on affiliated services including burn surgery, cardiovascular/thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, orthopedics, neurosurgery, pancreaticobiliary surgery, transplant surgery, minimally invasive surgery, and pediatric surgery, as required by the AAST Acute Care Surgery curriculum.

Research

The division of acute care surgery has a robust research presence at the University of Florida. Multiple faculty members have active research programs within the Department of Surgery’s Laboratory of Inflammation Biology and Surgical Science which focuses on the role of innate cellular immunity and inflammatory mediators in the host response to severe trauma, burn injury, and sepsis. The team, under the direction of principle investigators Fred Moore, MD, and Linc Moldawer PhD, was recently awarded a National Institutes of Health P50 center grant to establish the UF Sepsis and Critical Illness Research Center to study the persistent inflammation, immunosuppression and catabolism syndrome (PICS) following sepsis in surgical intensive care unit patients. Thus, the fellow has numerous opportunities to work on various projects, including but is not limited to translational studies (such as sepsis, trauma, inflammation and coagulation), outcomes and community outreach projects, as well as more long-term neurocognitive and muscle strength studies. The fellow is required to significantly contribute to an ongoing research project under faculty mentorship with abstract submission to a national meeting. Alternatively, original research is also encouraged, with appropriate faculty supervision and mentorship.

Application & Requirements

One position is available each academic year via application through the Surgical Critical Care ACGME match program. Applicants are required to be board-eligible in general surgery and have completed the core training requirements of an RRC-approved residency in general surgery prior to program admission. Please apply here.